Does anyone else use the Orangutan

i been playing 1.b4 all my life. my best games at master level have been with it. Its not my only opening of course, i play like 6 different things with white, but its always been one of my mains.

Yes. As an alternative to my favoured 1. e4 lines which sometimes need to go in for repair. I find that Lapshun and Conticello's "Play 1. b4" is a nice game resource for playing it the way the late Alexey Sokolsky did whilst Welling and Basman's "U Cannot Be Serious" is in part a nice resource for playing it the way the late Mike Basman did. I personally get on better with the Basman method.

I prefer 1. Nc3 , more tricky

I played in 2008-2009, 2014, and mid-2022 to mid-2024 over the board. I don't play it much now except maybe in blitz. But still, 5 years and probably about 300 games with it as White. I also have 4 games as Black. 1 rapid, 3 classical, in OTB events. I won the Rapid, and have 2 wins and a draw against 1.b4 in classical.

I have since switched to 1.d4 with the Levitsky and Trompowsky attacks being my primary opening of choice.

The Solosky is signficantly less popular now than it was years ago, thanks to everyone in the world having access to an engine. 1...e5 2 Bb2 Bxe4 3 Bxf5 Nf6 is very easy for someone to study as Black, and easy to understand, since Black actually obtains a slight lead in development (which can get very out of control if White responds with 4 a3 question mark Ba5!, rather than 4 c3; after 4 a3?! Ba5 5 Bc3 Bxc3 6 Nxc3 c5 (or castles followed by ...c5). Then ...d5 after, black is doing great.

The important thing is to focus on rapid development, space grabbing and less on pawn structure health. For example after 4 c3 Be7 5 d4, Black should focus on playing ...d5 and ...c5 and castling as soon as possible. If white's bishop remains on e5, Black can kick it with ...Nbd7 after ...d5.
White can't really do much about Blacks' plan. If white tries a catalan-like fianchetto, black still does the same moves. Black can make basically the same moves almost regardless of White does after move 3.

Meanwhile, everyone is playing 1 b3....

magnus carlsen pretty much changed 1.b4 theory in the exchange variation. by showing a new way to play it. you go 4.c3 and put your pawns in dark squares, trade the dark square bishop and usually fianchetto the light square bishop. The way the engine wants you to play it is actually very pleasant for white in the long term, you just have to memorize like 2-3 move order tricks, involving when you play nd2, ne2 and bg2, . If black tries to play d5 and c5, the d5 pawn ends up permanently isolated and easy to attack with moves like ,bg2, qb3, and ne2-nf4. I have lost count how many games i have won because i end up with two knights vs knight and dark squared bishop and the poor light squared d5 pawns is easy pickings.

https://lichess.org/uWF0g6DM/https://lichess.org/0CyFG6o3/these two carlsen games pretty much changed the 1.b4 theory. FM Carsten Hansen wrote the best book to date on the orangutan in large part thanks to lots of rapid experimentation with this new way of playing the exchange line with engine added improvements.

I saw this game.

First of all, 5..d6 is silly. No wonder 5 g3 worked. It's obvious that White is going to take on f6 since the bishop has no escape square, so why doesn't black just play 5...d5 (or 5...c5), push both pawns in the center to d5 and c5 in two moves? If 5...d5, if White refuses to take on f6 (e.g. 6 Bg2), THEN you attack the bishop on e5 with ...Nbd7. Then black can recapture with the knight and he is better out of the opening. Giri simply wasted a tempo against the best player in the world, provoking a move that White wanted to play anyway. I've been going through TONS of giri's games (as well as every other GM rated from 2860 down to 2700) in the Catalan, while I'm trying to study the closed Catalan with the Bb4+ lines, and I've seen him do things like this too many times.

In the Hikaru game, there was nothing wrong with his...c5, although ....d5 Bxf6 Bxf6 7 d4 c5 simply transposes again to a primary line, although 7 g3?! doesn't work because of 7...d4! Black will eventually hit the doubled d-pawn with ...c5 (e.g. after castling, or right away if white plays 8 cxd4)

Hikaru messed up by playing 7....b6 instead of 7...Nc6, and Black is still forcing White to equalize. HIkaru's slipup allowed White to apply pressure for "Free" on the long diagonal and complicate the position. His 7 ...b6 is a "similar" loss of a tempo, because if Hikaru had played 7...Nc6, after 8 Bg2, Black can play 8...b5! (or 8...d5 followed by 9 d4 Qa5), gaining space and doing a lot more than having the pawn passively placed on b6. After ...b6, playing ...b5 would cost a massive tempo. With ...Nc6 and ...b5 right away, sure White still has pressure on that diagonal but Black gains a lot more space. Black doesn't even need to waste time on ...Bb7, he can go for ...Rb8 and ...b4 and keep the bishop on c8, where it isn't blocking the b-file.

Carlsen didn't revitalize anything. His opponents simply made mistakes. Stockfish doesn't lie.

its easy to be a keyboard warrior and critisize the worlds champion play on a rapid game with the engine turned on, especially when you turn it off for whites best reply. 
carlsen revived the line and the online database stats dont lie. I been observing b4 theory for years and virtually no one played 4.c3 except rarely from myers idea of going 4.c3 and then 5.c4 going back to sokolsky main line territory with the quirk of moving the bishop (turns out, its slightly better not to kick the bishop since in some lines after cxd5 nxd5, the bishop back on e7 allows bf6 early) then after carlsen played those two games, you have over a 1000 games on lichess alone with that line. Now whether the sokolsky main line with 4.c4 vs the carlsen idea of 4.c3 as the best reply is debated. the Latter is much easier to play so i side there.
forcing white to equalize LMAO this is b4, no one is thinking a computer critical line from the main suggested move should give white anything more than equality. no one plays 1.b3 hoping for an opening advantage either. For what its worth, white outscores black in plenty of these lines in the lichess database.

When i play the exchange orangutan in OTB, im practically begging to get some punk play the engine suggested d5-c5 idea because half the time they dont realize that after im castled their initiative virtually dissipates and they will be on guard duty for the d5 and b7 square the rest of the game, whereas whites position has no weaknesses. with the bishop eating granite on f6, the bishop pair advantage is never felt. Sure, the engine will say 0.00 but thats chess. You get an unbalanced playable middlegame where you should be more familiar with the core ideas. IF you want more, go play 1.e4 or 1.d4 and memorize all the main lines for the extra 0.3 that will go away in 25 moves.

Maybe at a Grandmaster level it's "new", but I've faced 1 b4 for MANY years, and EVERYONE plays c3, even 10 years ago. So I honestly don't know what you're smoking. Hell, I faced c3 back on internet chess club back during the stone ages.

I trust stockfish evaluation, not carlsen and Hikaru playing YOLO openings. When one of those players gets above 3600 elo, then maybe I'll care. Not to be rude to you, but I *do* care about the truth about chess. Do you understand WHY Carlsen wins? Because he knows how to milk ANY little thing in a position, even if he is objectively worse. And his board vision is extraordinaray. That doesn't make 1 b4 a sound opening if you're trying to WIN as white. I guarantee you Giri and Hikaru didn't spend hundreds of hours studying 1 b4 theory when no one plays it, and if you study an opening and no one plays it for years, it's difficult to remember all the little nuances when you have 10 variations of the Italian and Catalan fresh in your mind.

People making mistakes on *move 1* of Freestyle chess really shows just how little we humans understand complex chess, when we don't have hundreds of years of opening theory to fall back on (and this comment came directly from Hikaru).

here is some truth about chess, its a draw. here its the truth about 1.b4, its equal. Anything else i can enlighten you on?

What you are saying is a simple lie. engines started to show 4.c3 as possibly the best move around the mid 2010's but they never recommended a viable strategic plan or played it the way Carlsen did. 4.c3 was one of like half a dozen moves tried without a consensus on what to do with the main line being 4.c4 (or one or two moves later) with delaying c4 too long and allowing d5-c5 to lead black to a better game. , i myself tried to make c3 work with plans like, c3, e3, d3 with bishop going back to g3 .It was never theory, and i implore you to find me any chess book or high level literature that recommend 4.c3. You wont find it in sokoslky, lapshun, or konikowsky (only this one barely mentions the myer idea of 4.c3, Bx 5.c4 as an obscure sidenote)
Only the Hansen book, which came out the same year carlsen played those games that actually built theory around c3. Actually this is very easy to prove. Just look at the master database. after 1.b4 e5 2.bb2 bxb4 3.bxe5 nf6 4.c3 be7 (much more common than ba5 and main line here) 5.e3, every single master game is post 2021 (except one that went with the myers idea of c3 and c4), for 5.g3 the same fact, all post 2021, for 5.d4 the only player to play it prior to 2021 was an IM named stefanov who played it with e3 ,d4 and bd3 which is just winging it with natural play, no g3 in sight. There is ZERO evidence of master level praxis with Carlsens idea of e3, c3, d4 , bxf6 and g3 prior to him playing it. 
The stockfish eval is EQUAL, so neither point you make makes much no freaking sense. One is a factual lie, the other in insisting black is better. he isnt. after the critical line with bxf6, bxf6, 0-0 d5 and c5 vs ,c3,d4,e3 and g3, stockfish 17 at depth 54 gives a damming -0.09 lmao. thats a better eval than 1.f4 and 1.nc3 d5 2.e4 and comparable to 1.b3. 
STOP MONKEYING AROUND BOI

I think dude above me knows what he's talking about about ☠️

I just started using the polish after watching a 10 minute YouTube video and reading this thread. I’m 10 wins, 1 loss 1 draw with it all against 1700+ up to 1900 so far. The engine HATES it but man it is really good for taking people out of book. I will continue to play it and learn a little more for use as a surprise weapon. It’s very trappy but not really a gambit, and can give white massive attacking chances.

I think the best part about is that black rarely knows that 1…e5 is the best move or any other theory beyond it. The second best part is that it often transposes into Taimanov but for white.

I’m usually a player but when I get bored Polish is my go-to to get out of the routine as white. However I have to say that it is less interesting when I play a lot of weaker opponents casually OTB, because you don’t play very aggressively nor do they, so you have to basically beat them in a long strategic game which isn’t bad, but other openings do the trick more reliably.

Also I don’t think anyone needs to study loads of theory on it, just like trw0311 mentioned, I also only watched the 10 minute youtube video.

It really is a great opening against humans. Non emotional engines trash it, but there’s nothing bad about it. Your opponent is ready to play their booked up stuff and you’re like nah we’re playing this game . It’s very confusing. It often gets chaotic but if that’s your playstyle, it’s great. I just play a ton against higher rated players and I like playing like a poor man’s tal. Players that seemed hard with conventional openings become easier with this polish: